Coceral lowered the bar on estimates for the European Union wheat crop, the world's biggest, foreseeing only a small rise in the French harvest, and a drop below 12m tonnes in the UK's.

The industry group, in its first estimates for the 2013 harvest, pegged EU soft wheat production at 127.8m tonnes, a figure up 3.2m tonnes year on year, but below an estimate on Thursday of 131.6m tonnes from analysis group Strategie Grains.

The European Commission earlier in the week pegged the crop even higher, at 132.1m tonnes.

While Coceral did not comment on its estimates, the data factored in a fall to just under 12.0m tonnes, for the first time in more than a decade, in production in the UK, where wet weather cut autumn sowings to 25% below expectations.

French prospects

Furthermore, the group forecast a rise of only 123,000 tonnes, to 35.9m tonnes, in the harvest in France, the EU's top wheat grower, where excessive rains also dogged some regions.

France's two biggest wheat- growing regions, Centre and Picardie, received more than twice their normal rainfall in December, according to Meteo-France data.

Although estimating French sowings rising to 5.02m hectares, a little above the French farm ministry estimate, Coceral pegged the yield at 7.15 tonnes per hectare, a decline on last year's 7.34 tonnes-per-hectare result.

FranceAgriMer estimates the French crop as being 66% in "good" or "very good" condition as of March 4, a little below the 68% a year before.

With French barley output seen falling nearly 1.4m tonnes, thanks to lower sowings and yield hopes, the country's overall grains harvest will decline year on year, Coceral said.

Spain overtakes UK

The group pegged the German crop at 23.6m tonnes, a rise of nearly 1.2m tonnes year on year, and a figure in line with that from Deutsche Raiffeisenverband (DRV), the German farm co-operatives association, on Wednesday.

DRV attributed its forecast for a rise in production in part to the fact that "up to now, there is no significant frost damage to winter plantings".

And Coceral forecast bigger wheat harvests in the likes of Poland and Romania too, besides a jump on one-half in barley output in Spain, whose crops last year were dented by severe drought.

Indeed, Spain, with a total grains crop of 20.2m tonnes, will overtake the UK as the EU's fourth-ranked grains producer, Coceral said.